Seeing even the most disciplined and non-violent form of protest as an intolerable affront against long-established modes of racial contact, Lawson’s dismissal from Vanderbilt, was a strategy that whites time and again applied in an effort to keep the social order as it was. Lawson, as others before him was constructed as an outsider who came to Nashville to instigate an otherwise content black populace. Owing to the fact that few of the earlier protesters had a discernible political agenda, their actions have often been simplistically subsumed under the frame of assimilationist activism aiming to liberate the black middle-classes from the burden of racial stigma, while leaving the problems of the lower classes largely unaddressed. However,
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Their interactions with officials certainly helped to lie bare the hypocrisy of the legal system that was in place. Furthermore, an in-depth exploration of various aspects that potentially shaped the legal understanding of activists provides increased insight into the local specificities of the “racial etiquette” that was at work in Nashville. Here, particularly the way white constantly redefined the patterns of what they suggested to be proper and legal conduct, often by relying on the appropriation of legal codes that were if not obscure, mostly unrelated to the matter at hand. Hence, instead of merely using a civil rights integrationist lens, a focus on the politics of open defiance against a system of officially sanctioned deference based on changing patterns of racialized social control, could be a more insightful way to conceptualize the various strategies student activists used throughout the 1960s. These tactics were firmly grounded in a politics of respectability aimed to lessen the impact of the powerful racist constructions at play in the recreation of white public opinion. The students challenged …show more content…
The students stood their ground notwithstanding the fierce attacks of white customers or the lunch counter personnel. Refusing to protect the young protesters against the vigilantes, law enforcement entered the stores after the attacks to arrest the students under charges of “inciting to riot.” What makes the cases in Nashville particularly interesting is not simply the fact that the group was among the first sit-in activists in the country and therefore received a lot of northern media attention, or that some of the Nashvillian activists would move on to become some of the most prominent figures in the non-violent struggle against Jim Crow. Rather, in Nashville, the decision to legally enforce the segregation of inner-city lunch counters was not based on a codified law that obligated business owners to racially segregate their eating sections. Hence, the activists’ action targeted customary segregation, a well-established practice in great parts of the country, not just the South. As insults that questioned the civility of African American and white activists were not enough to halt their efforts, white merchants and officials came together to search for legal codes that could be appropriated to reinforce the racial status quo that allowed African American customers to frequent their stores to
Their interactions with officials certainly helped to lie bare the hypocrisy of the legal system that was in place. Furthermore, an in-depth exploration of various aspects that potentially shaped the legal understanding of activists provides increased insight into the local specificities of the “racial etiquette” that was at work in Nashville. Here, particularly the way white constantly redefined the patterns of what they suggested to be proper and legal conduct, often by relying on the appropriation of legal codes that were if not obscure, mostly unrelated to the matter at hand. Hence, instead of merely using a civil rights integrationist lens, a focus on the politics of open defiance against a system of officially sanctioned deference based on changing patterns of racialized social control, could be a more insightful way to conceptualize the various strategies student activists used throughout the 1960s. These tactics were firmly grounded in a politics of respectability aimed to lessen the impact of the powerful racist constructions at play in the recreation of white public opinion. The students challenged …show more content…
The students stood their ground notwithstanding the fierce attacks of white customers or the lunch counter personnel. Refusing to protect the young protesters against the vigilantes, law enforcement entered the stores after the attacks to arrest the students under charges of “inciting to riot.” What makes the cases in Nashville particularly interesting is not simply the fact that the group was among the first sit-in activists in the country and therefore received a lot of northern media attention, or that some of the Nashvillian activists would move on to become some of the most prominent figures in the non-violent struggle against Jim Crow. Rather, in Nashville, the decision to legally enforce the segregation of inner-city lunch counters was not based on a codified law that obligated business owners to racially segregate their eating sections. Hence, the activists’ action targeted customary segregation, a well-established practice in great parts of the country, not just the South. As insults that questioned the civility of African American and white activists were not enough to halt their efforts, white merchants and officials came together to search for legal codes that could be appropriated to reinforce the racial status quo that allowed African American customers to frequent their stores to